She nearly choked as she saw two priests step out of the door. The seller appeared and pointed toward the liquor shop. As the priests headed toward her Emerahl’s heart began to race.

They probably just want a drink, she told herself. But they were looking at everyone in the street. As an old woman passed them, they paused and stared at her intently. No, it’s not a drink they’re looking for.

Suddenly the seller’s behavior made sense: his evading her eyes, his delaying her. His assistant disappearing. The whispered conversation between them.

“…a rather delicate and urgent matter to attend to.”

The matter of an old woman selling cures? Had the shop owner been told to watch for her? I don’t know that for sure, she told herself. This could be a simple coincidence. The priests might be looking for someone else. The fact that she had just been driven from her home by one was making her suspect them all of seeking her.

Coincidence or not, I’m not waiting around to find out. Emerahl opened her bag, pulled out her oiled waterproof sea tawl and shrugged into it. Removing the shawl about her head, she replaced it with a broad-brimmed sailor hat, tucking her hair inside. Then she wrapped her bag in the shawl and put it under her arm.

The priests were only a few strides from the liquor seller’s now. She stepped out of the door, paused to make the sign of the circle with one hand in their direction, then moved away, walking with the rolling, unhurried gait of a sailor.

She waited for them to call out, but only the boasting of the sellers broke the general hubbub of the market. It seemed to take forever for her to reach the end of the street. Once there, she quickened her pace a little and kept to the shadows.

Am I being pursued? If I am, how could the priests have guessed that I would come to the Porin night market to sell cures?

The answer was clear. If the priest at Corel had travelled up the coast he would have heard of the strange old woman selling cures who sailed alone in a boat. He would have recognized her and alerted priests in towns ahead by telepathy, telling them to watch for an old curer woman passing through. It was sheer luck that she hadn’t been confronted by another priest before now.

But why? These priests couldn’t possibly know who she really was.

Maybe the priest at Corel was curious to know who the cranky old sorceress was who had been living in a remote lighthouse for so long…

Oh. Her stomach sank. If he asked the villagers how long I’d been there, they might have told him generations. That would make him suspect I am immortal. Even if he doesn’t believe it, he’s probably obliged to check.